Alexander the Great: the 'good' sources

Official propaganda: Callisthenes

The book of Deeds of Alexander is now lost, but underlies much of what was written later. It seems to have been the work of a professional flatterer who knew how to please a king who had developed a life-long rivalry with Achilles. For example, it contained many allusions to Homer's Iliad, a calculation of the date of the fall of Troy (exactly thousand years before Alexander's visit to the sacred city), and references to towns mentioned by Homer and visited by Alexander. Callisthenes stressed Alexander's manly behavior and the effeminate weakness of the Persians. Another story that Alexander must have appreciated is that of the sea doing obedience to the new Achilles (text). One thing is certain: Callisthenes did not object to Alexander's claim to be the son of Zeus. 

It is not clear when the book of Deeds of Alexander was published. But secondary authors do not quote it to describe the events after 329, and it is possible that Callisthenes considered the death of Bessus, the last leader of the Persians, to be a fitting climax of his history: after all, Alexander had now conquered the whole of Persia, had reached the Jaxartes, had founded Alexandria Eschatê, and seemed to have triumphed after exactly five years of fighting. (A couple of months later, fighting was renewed.) 

Be this as it may, it is certain that the work was not published in yearly installments to inform those remaining at home (as Julius Caesar was to publish his Commentaries on the war in Gaul). It was published as a unity, which can be shown from the fact that it consistently portrayed Alexander's right hand man Parmenion as overprudent. Before 330, there was no reason to describe Alexander's most trusted and capable general like this; however, in November, he had been executed because his son Philotas was suspected of a coup (text).

It seems that later historians had access to a sequel to Callisthenes' Deeds of Alexander. This work was perhaps based on the Royal diary that is quoted by several authors who describe the death of Alexander (text). That would explain why we have detailed information about chronology and appointments. However, this is not certain. 

Callisthenes' book on the Deeds of Alexander and the Royal diary are primary sources. They are now lost, but were used by secondary authors like Cleitarchus and Ptolemy, who are at the beginning of the 'vulgate' and the 'good' tradition. Therefore, they share the same chronology and mention the same officials. Their works are now lost too, but can be reconstructed from tertiary sources: Diodorus of Sicily and Curtius Rufus, Arrian and Plutarch.

Arrian of Nicomedia

• eight books containing the teachings of Epictetus (four books survive);
• twelve books containing Epictetus' conversations (lost);
• a Meteorology - the study skies were considered part of the usual philosophical curriculum (lost);
• a History of Bithynia in eight books (lost; excerpt);
• a work on the Alans (lost);
• a History of the Parthian wars in seventeen books, of which ten were devoted to the war in which the author had taken part (lost; an excerpt survives);
• a book on military tactics (the part on cavalry survives);
• a military handbook on the best tactics in a war against the Alans - he advises to fight as Alexander had done;
• biographies of Dion of Syracuse, Timoleon of Corinth and a bandit named Tilliboros (all lost);
• a book on hunting;
• a description of the Black Sea in twenty-five books;
• the seven books of the Anabasis: the history of Alexander's march into Asia (excerpt);
• the Indikê (one book), telling about the marvels of India and the voyage home of Alexander's admiral Nearchus;
• the ten books Events after Alexander, known from a Byzantine summary.

Like Cleitarchus, Arrian tried to give some sort of assessment of Alexander, but his opinion is the opposite of Cleitarchus', who had presented the Macedonian king as a young prince who had been corrupted by his constant success. Arrian, on the other hand, admires Alexander, although he is too much a philosopher to be completely uncritical. Sometimes, he condemns aspects of the conqueror's behavior, but as a whole, he is positive about Alexander's achievements. A typical part of the Anabasis is book 4, where Arrian places three painful incidents together and condemns Alexander's behavior: chronologically, two of them do not belong at this place, and by treating them together, he has prevented that the reader came up against the hard facts too often. 

As we noticed in the catalogue above, Arrian also published an Indikê, which is essentially an appendix to the Anabasis. This remarkable text probably tells less about India than about the literary tastes of Arrian's age. To start with, it is entirely based on the Indikê by Alexander's fleet-commander Nearchus. More recent descriptions are quoted by several Christian authors and Arrian's younger contemporary Philostratus, but Arrian chose to ignore these recent sources because they were written in "Koinê-Greek", which was considered ugly in the second century CE. Nearchus, on the other hand, had written decent 'classical' Greek and even though the contents of his Indikê were outdated, Nearchus  was to be preferred. A second point is that Arrian choose to write his own Indikê in the Ionian dialect. This was done because the classical text on geography, the Histories of Herodotus of Halicarnassus, were written in that dialect and contained no reliable information on India. 

As we already saw, Arrian also wrote a book on the Events after Alexander. It is known from a summary by the Byzantine patriarch Photius (820-897), and breaks off rather abruptly. Maybe this work remained unfinished (more...).

It is a tribute to the quality of these works and their author, that modern scholarship usually follows Arrian, who personifies the 'good' tradition, and adds details from the authors of the 'vulgate' tradition. It is only since the publication of the Astronomical diary (1988) that oriental texts are receiving attention. 
 

Ptolemy

Ptolemy wrote memoirs on Alexander's campaigns. They are almost entirely known from Arrian's Anabasis, but this is sufficient to come to some conclusions about their nature. In the first place, he uses Callisthenes' Deeds of Alexander and a sequel, because he has the correct chronology of the events and knows the names of the appointees. In the second place, Ptolemy sometimes exaggerates his own role. For example, he gave himself an important role in the battle near Issus. In the third place, the work was biased against Antigonus Monophthalmus, one of Ptolemy's rivals in the wars after the death of Alexander; Antigonus' successful campaigns in what is now Turkey, are completely ignored. In the fourth place, Ptolemy concentrated on the war; there are no indications that his memoirs contained digressions. A unifying psychological concept, like Cleitarchus' idea that Alexander's success corrupted him or Aristobulus' pothos-motif (below), seems to have been absent: in Ptolemy's view, Alexander had been a rational expansionist. 

At one place, Ptolemy corrects Cleitarchus' account of Alexander's campaigns, and this proves that Ptolemy's history was published after theHistory of Alexander, which can be dated between 310 and 301. However, we can perhaps be a little bit more precise. There are indications that Ptolemy's memoirs were published before 301, because in that year, Antigonus was killed, which made Ptolemy's bias against his rival rather pointless. This argument, however, is not conclusive. 

It is possible that Ptolemy started to write his memoirs in order to prove that he was worthy of the royal title he had assumed: for example, he wrote that he had killed an Indian king and had stripped him of his armor, an incident that must have reminded his readers of the behavior of the heroes of Homer, who had been kings. 
 

Aristobulus and other officers

The Indikê is now lost, but its contents are well-known from several sources, especially the Indikê by Arrian. It seems to have consisted of two parts: the first half contained a description of India's borders, size, rivers, population, castes, animals -especially elephants-, armies and customs; the second half described Nearchus' voyage home. It also contained some remarks about Onesicritus, who is portrayed as incompetent. (An example can be found here.) Nearchus' Indikê seems to have ended with a description of the last days of Alexander.
 

Plutarch of Chaeronea

Plutarch writes in the prologue of his Life of Alexander/Life of Julius Caesar: 

It is not histories I am writing, but lives; and in the most glorious deeds there is not always an indication of virtue of vice, indeed a small thing like a phrase or a jest often makes a greater revelation of a character than battles where thousands die.

[tr. E.L. Bowie]

If the reader of this article has the impression that Plutarch is a boring moralist, he is mistaken. His sincere interest in Alexander and his men as human beings makes the Life the most readable of all publications on the Macedonian king - both ancient and modern.